Last Friday I found myself in a dermatologist office. As she was about to slice open my finger for a biopsy of the painful weird red bumps, I mentioned to her that at first I thought that maybe it was stress causing the irritation on my skin. She asked what was stressful in my life and I don’t think she was ready for the full answer I gave her. Before I had finished explaining “the stress” she had taken a rather large chunk out of me and tied me back up with several stitches. It was hard to answer that question. I try to focus on the good but the truth is that I have a lot of hard stuff that fill my days. Being somebody that regularly struggles with depression, this exchange left me feeling flat and rather down and sadly I was just too tired to fight it, I was empty. As I fumbled to the end of the day I was reminded of something wonderful, it was salsa weekend. In the morning we would journey to the farm, one of my favorite places on earth. I love connecting to where our food comes from, the people that grow it, I love being part of that process. As I thought about the glory of it all I was filled with gratitude and the long list of stress that I had rattled off melted out of my mind. I truly think that one of the best cures to the human condition is gratitude and the next best is generosity and for me, those two intersect at the farm. There is no way that we could consume the amount of salsa that we make on farm days. We make it to give away and it is one of my favorite things. We go around the week of Thanksgiving and the girls give salsa to their favorite people, to let them know we are thankful for them, it is so fun! In fact, it is so fun, that thinking about it I barely feel the pain in my hands. That could also be because I had two fabulous helpers to cut all the tomatoes for me and boy was I grateful for them!